W
hat does it mean to be a young person with wealth anyway? If we went by
some of the sitcoms and soap operas we grew up with, it‘d be pretty easy
to define: a secret stash of cash in the wall safe, champagne parties, private
planes, a butler with a British accent. That definition also makes it easy for most of
us to say, “Sure, we have more than we need, but it‘s not like we‘re rich.“ Of course
some people do go to fancy parties all night, shop all day and generally live it up like
an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But what really defines the lifestyles of
the young and wealthy?
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Having wealth as a young person means we‘ve got tons of choices about everything
from where we live to what kind of work we do. It‘s about the freedom to make
plans for the future based on our dreams, and being able to take risks because we
have resources to fall back on if we fail.
Wealth doesn‘t protect us from disappointment and loss, but it does make all
the difference in how we live through those hard times. It changes the way we get
treated in a hospital or a courtroom. It can allow us the time to mourn without worrying about our family‘s financial status. Having wealth is a safety net, a backup plan
and an expanded set of options all rolled into one.
For those of us who grew up wealthy, wealth means things like afterschool lessons
and tutors, summer camps and vacations. It means we had access to career-building
opportunities through family friends or family businesses and foundations. It means
we were told, “You can be whatever you want to be“ by everyone, especially our
teachers—and we knew our family could afford the education we‘d need to make
good on that. And if wealth is a relatively new thing in our lives, it means having the
option to give the next generation a similar set of opportunities.
Having wealth is about the big stuff like not having debt or car payments. And the
small stuff like catching a cultural reference. It‘s about knowing how to talk and dress
and act to make the bigwigs comfortable (even if we wear ripped fishnets and give
them the finger instead). It‘s about having access to those bigwigs in the first place.
All this adds up to something much more than bank accounts or luxuries. Money
alone can‘t define what it means to be a young person with wealth. The word that
describes all this stuff is class privilege.*
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Right about now you may be thinking, “But all the class privilege in the world
doesn‘t erase discrimination.“ Class privilege is useless against the everyday racism
that people of color have to deal with. It doesn‘t stop sexism or homophobia. It‘s no
shield against oppression at all.
*
Wait a second, this book never defined class! Or classism! It’s only talking about class privilege,
and only defining it by example! Bad book! The thing is, this book’s focus is on understanding privilege through personal experience. (Check out the preface for the whole philosophy behind doing it
this way.) Understanding privilege is only a first step towards understanding class and classism, but
it’s still a pretty crucial one. As for next steps, the Resource Section has a list of books that lay out
much more in-depth analyses of class and classism.
But while class privilege does not insulate, it can negotiate—it can serve as a mediator for those of us who have to deal with discrimination. It gives us access to concrete services like good doctors and lawyers. It can mean having enough resources,
mobility and connections to escape a painful or dangerous situation instead of being
trapped there. It also grants us more abstract necessities like being able to take the
time and space to heal from traumatic experiences. Class privilege gives us options
that other people struggling against the same forces just don‘t have.*
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Class privilege can also come
as a package deal with many
other kinds of privilege,
like white privilege or male
privilege. In this case, class
privilege acts as an amplifier. It can turn the noise up
so loud that it‘s hard to hear
anything else but our own
experiences—leaving us a
little bit hard of hearing, and
making it even tougher to
sort out what‘s going on.
This doesn‘t mean that understanding privilege is some competition and the
person with the least privilege wins the most social change points. It just means that
the more privilege we have, the more challenging the process of understanding it
can be. Having more privilege usually puts us ahead of the game in most situations.
In this case, ironically, it means we‘re gonna have to work harder.
* bell hooks lays this idea out in Where We Stand: Class Matters. Check out the chapter “Class and Race:
The New Black Elite.”
ŽMy mom and dad divorced when I was young. With my
mom, we got a lot of assistance on clothes, utility
bills, heating bills, stuff like that. We got a monthly
food basket.
But with my dad, at that time I would say he was in the
top five percent economically and drove luxury sports
sedans and went on international vacations whenever he
wanted to and was able to buy us what we needed. It was
weird, because it was always a very rigid line between my
lifestyle with my dad and my lifestyle with my mom to the
point that I even had two totally different wardrobes.
It was a very nasty situation in my teen years. I
realized that I had access to certain things with my dad
that I didn’t have with my mom. I eventually made the
decision to leave my mom and stay with my dad. But I think
that there’s always been some guilt there at the same time.
When I open my mouth people are much more willing to
listen to me. I have the advantage, in the end, of being
a white male. I’m a straight white male, a Christian
straight white male. It is more difficult for me to see the
oppression that other people face. There have been dozens
of times in my life where I just literally shrugged off
oppression, not realizing what it was. I’ve never been able
to understand how I managed to forget about a lot of the
class discrimination I experienced living with my mom. Not
just manage to forget but lose the tools to discern.
— Garrett